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Adolfo pulls up outside Malcolm’s apartment and lets the town car idle at the curb. It’s February in the city, when the wind is still icy cold as it comes off the river, channeling through the tall buildings and narrow alleyways to wind around the necks and hands of unprotected pedestrians. Malcolm can feel it around the frame of the car door, his hand already resting on the handle.
“Malcolm,” Jessica says, hand on his knee, halting his escape. “I can’t say I understand it all, but I am glad I got to see you,” — she waves her hand in the air — “in action, and how happy it makes you.” She smiles and leans forward, giving him a kiss on the cheek; she’s been so much more affectionate ever since Watkins and the weeks in the hospital after. “I won’t push you on the vacation anymore.”
He smiles, “Thank you.”
“I will, however, be sending Louisa to restock your refrigerator.”
Malcolm groans, but takes it with as good humor as he can, knowing she only means well. “Okay.”
“Good. Get some sleep.”
He manages his escape, stepping out into the freezing night, tugging his jacket collar up for whatever protection that provides, ears cold without his scarf. He waves as his mother drives off. As soon as the sleek black town car turns the corner, Malcolm sags like a marionette with half its strings cut, the adrenaline rush from rescuing George Taylor leaving him tired and shaking. He hadn’t felt it until they were in the car, Jessica coming to find him as he waited for an Uber, insisting she give him a ride home.
A wave of dizziness hits him as he tries to unlock his front door, causing Malcolm to frown in confusion as he tries a few times to get the key in the lock. He recovered most of his strength by the end of his hospital stay, with a few lingering after-effects he’d mitigated well. I’ve certainly had the practice, he thought. Life as an insomniac taught him how to manage with very little sleep and sometimes crushing exhaustion.
Halfway up the stairs, his left leg starts burning. Rather, starts burning more. He must have pulled something when he leapt over the table to get George down. Or maybe when he fell from the third floor onto Gil’s car. He grips the railing, leaning towards the wall, using it to get up to the second floor.
Malcolm groans, rubbing his forehead as he comes to the second door leading to his loft. The Les Mans. He’s already thought about making arrangements to get it restored at one of the best shops in Manhattan. Thankfully, it was there to break his fall. He knew before jumping out the window it was there and, as a soft top, would be damaged. But he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Malcolm manages to unlock the yale lock after two tries and pushes into his loft, considering it a personal victory as he feels the pain pulsating in his upper thigh. Sunshine trills happily as he passes her cage, and he waves at her before hanging his coat on the stand nearby.
A drink. He needs a drink.
Five minutes later, he’s sinking into the couch in his shirtsleeves, one lamp on, a tumbler half full of amber liquid held in one hand hanging over the edge of the cushion. Malcolm’s hopeful that the combination of aches and pains in his back, the adrenaline crash, and a topper of alcohol will put him to sleep deep enough that he won’t be stuck in the horror theater the entire night through — three good hours of sleep would feel amazing right now.
He’s halfway through his drink--eyes closed, enjoying the silence punctuated with soft, trilling songs from Sunshine--when he feels something wet on his leg. Floating between a state of awake and asleep, he doesn’t feel himself slipping. The transition is sudden, jarring; Malcolm’s back in that room, bright yellow light harsh on his eyelids as he tries to find peace and calm, blood dripping from under his fingers onto the floor, sliding down his cool skin. His side burns, a fire licking up and down his body, seizing his back muscles, overwhelming his senses so much he can barely breathe.
Except the scent of blood is so strong, it turns his stomach, and he’s going to gag, he’s going to add puke to the blood —
— but Watkins is in front of him, thrusting the knife into his side again, and he can’t even scream.
The sound of shattering glass breaks him from the flashback, eyes wide with fear, breath fast and shallow. Alcohol spreads across the wood floor and into the edge of the Oriental rug under the coffee table; Malcolm watches with detached apathy as it soaks into the fibers.
Around him, the air is still and silent but for the frantic pace of his breathing, his hyperawareness of it causing the cadence to speed up for a moment before he comes back to himself. Malcolm puts a hand to his chest as he sits up and focuses on his counting as he tries box breathing - counts to four on each inhale, hold, release, wait. Maybe he can head the flashbacks off before they throw him into a full-blown panic attack, the kind that leaves him huddled under a weighted blanket or wandering the streets around his loft - or screaming as he tries, and fails, to get some sleep. He should take Gil up on his offer to seek safety at his house, but he still finds it hard to burden the man with more of...him.
Slowly, his breathing begins to even out, stuttering as it struggles to fit within the counting structure. Malcom continues to try calming himself this way, unwilling to give up, leaning on it as a bit of a crutch. His stubbornness has always been one of his greatest assets, or so he tells himself. Needing to get up and move around, he swings first his right leg over the edge of the couch, then his left. A bolt of sharp, electric pain shoots through the limb and into his hip. He winces, curling forward, breath now caught in his lungs which are seizing for a completely different reason.
Don’t go back there. Don’t go back. He feels the pull of a rough cement floor and cramped muscles.
He needs to ground himself. Right. Something to keep him here, now. Because the pain, the scent of blood in the air that burns his nose, is triggering him in a most frustrating way. Malcolm slams a fist down on the arm of the couch with a growl that turns into a truncated sob. Why does there always have to be something else complicating his fucking life?
He grabs his phone from his trouser pocket and thumbs through his contacts, pausing on Dani. She’s already dealt with so much today. But she’s your friend, this is what friends do — they’re there for each other. And, if she isn’t his friend, she’ll say no, and that he’s too much, and then he can stop waiting for that inevitable day to come when she tells him she can’t be his friend anymore — because it always does.
“Screw it,” he decides, and hits call.
“Hey,” she answers casually after two rings. He hears music playing softly in the background, imagines she’s enjoying a pleasant night relaxing after the day they’ve had. “What’s up?”
Malcolm stays silent, looking to the tear he finds in his slacks, thankful they’re dark enough he can’t see the blood or the wound he knows is hiding underneath. Bastard. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath —
“Bright?” she asks. “You good?”
“Somewhat,” he answers. As long as he doesn’t move, his thigh only burns, and that he can deal with. Malcolm tells himself it’s nothing more than a pulled muscle and that all he has to do is stay exactly where he is on the couch.
“You’re not really giving me a lot to go on here.”
He appreciates that she isn’t accusing him of doing something stupid, or over-reacting about his mental health--two reasons he doesn’t call his mother all that much anymore. Her overreactions, while something he has to admit he’s inherited a bit of, can be a bit overstimulating and very much not what he needs right now.
Malcolm hates how hard this is, but he’s thankful he even has someone to ask, to trust. “Why do we find it so hard to ask for help, you know, in general?” he asks, and immediately wishes he could take it back.
She tells him, “I can be there in 20 minutes.”
“Thank you,” he breathes out.
“You’ll be good?”
He chuckles, and winces at how unsteady it sounds. “Yes, I will.”
“Promise?”
“Dani,” groans Malcom, leaning his head back.
“See you soon.”
He holds the phone in both his hands long after he’s hung up, the white numbers of the time bright and not changing fast enough.
The promise of Dani’s arrival seems to quell some of the itching under his skin, the rolling anxiety shaking within that only shows through the tremor in his right hand. Not wanting to hyper focus on the phone’s clock, Malcolm sets it on the arm of the couch and turns his attention to the ripped fabric in his slacks. He’s always been the kind of person who handles things better when he has all the information; a clearer picture helps him anticipate and prepare. Gripping the fabric, he pulls, revealing his own pale skin and a deep, angry gash about three inches long, top layers of skin burned away by the heat of a bullet, the wound’s searing pain ratcheting up in intensity now he’s laid eyes on it.
A graze. A bullet graze.
Malcolm thinks back with a wry smile on his face. The reception. Isabelle firing at the man up on stage. Shouting for everyone to get down before taking a running leap at the table up on the platform to cover the intended target, his need to protect the world’s intended victims taking over his own small sense of self-preservation. It isn’t inconceivable that a bullet could have grazed his leg as he leapt over the table, unnoticed in the rush of adrenaline.
It must have been bleeding down his leg the entire time he was speaking with his mother, with Ainsley outside, with Dani before she shrugged on her jacket and found a cab. He pictures her smile when he finally convinced her to keep the dress; he’s always enjoyed giving gifts, but rarely has the chance to outside his family and Gil. A few acquaintances at school, when he was older, coworkers who put up with him in DC, maybe. Plus, it suited her.
The slacks are goners, anyway — he widens the tear and sees the evidence of his high pain tolerance in three stripes of red originating at the graze, disappearing under the dark fabric.
He stares down at the wound at the color — dark red, black on the edges, at the thin rivulets of blood that have stained his skin — feels that pull of memory, of the emotions that come before the images. It’s a warning signal to him, a last chance to do something else, anything else before he gets stuck again. This usually when he gets Sunshine out of his cage —
Malcolm sighs. Dani doesn’t have a key — he’ll have to get up and open the door. He steels himself, flexing his hands, and stands.
Well, he tries to stand, but falls right back down on his ass as his leg is on fire as soon as he puts any weight on it. Clearly, the adrenaline that got him home is long gone. Gritting his teeth, he tries again, right hand gripping the arm of the couch so tight his knuckles have gone white. When his leg wants to give out again, he doesn’t let it through force of will, but he concedes a groan when he takes a step, using the couch to keep him upright.
His vision whites out for a moment, head dizzy as he wavers before catching himself. Figuring it’ll be easier to support himself along the back of the couch, not the seat, Malcolm begins the long trek to the door. Each step chips at his resolve, and by the time he reaches the table under his windows, he knows there’s no walking back to the couch after unlocking the door; Malcolm feels sweat gathering in his palms, on his forehead. The stairs help him next as his arms shake, and he leans against the railing as he smiles at a chirping Sunshine.
“Hey there,” he greets, opening the cage. Sunshine hops out and jumps onto his outstretched hand. Malcolm pets his soft feathers, the texture calming. Four steps ahead of him is the front door. With Sunshine on his hand, Malcolm almost speed-walks to the door, unlocks it, then turns to lean against the wall next to it, slowly sliding down, left leg outstretched, until he lands.
Sunshine flies around a little, never too far, but Malcolm finds it a little hard to follow, his focus slipping from him every time he seems to find it, the constant motion making his head pound. He lets out a whistle and Sunshine comes back to land on his arm, where her little feet can be felt through the cotton of Malcolm’s dress shirt.
It isn’t long until the door downstairs buzzes. Malcolm tiredly reaches up and slaps his hand at the wall until he finds the right panel and buzzes her in. Dani’s soon knocking at the door, “Bright? You in there?”
“It’s open,” he says.
The door opens and Dani comes through, not knowing he’s sitting right inside with his legs extended. Malcolm realizes his mistake and is about to warn her when she, unsurprisingly, trips. It’s only over his ankles, so she stumbles and easily regains her footing, but the jar to his leg has Malcolm swallowing a curse, the burning sharpening the woolen feeling that had come over him. Sunshine twitters and flies high up towards the second floor.
“Oh my God.” Dani turns, both shocked and annoyed. Her eyes land on him as he winces, torn between wanting to grab at his leg and curl away from it, clenching his teeth. She crouches down in front of him on his right side and gives a wry smile. “Hey.” She touches his leg lightly and leans forward slightly, eyeing the tear in his slacks. “Bright,” she trails off in a warning tone.
He’d give her a shrug if he weren’t trying to keep from throwing up at the moment, the pain, as intense as when he crossed the room, now magnified by the sudden impact of her running into his leg. If he’d been sensible, he would have moved away from the door, anticipating Dani’s entrance — everyone who entered his loft went right for the kitchen island. If his head would stop feeling as if it were so light it would roll down his shoulder once detached, he may have done so. Instead, he lets his head fall back with a thump as it makes contact with the wall and closes his eyes.
“I didn’t notice until I got home,” is all he can tell her in a breath. Malcolm clenches and unclenches his fists at his sides, then feels her hand take his right in hers, gently prying his fingers open. Dani holds it for a minute, and squeezes, prompting him to crack open an eye.
“Maybe we should get you off the floor,” she suggests.
That isn’t something he feels is particularly necessary at the moment. “I’m fine.”
Dani huffs a frustrated sigh and stands, looking around the apartment, wild curls swinging around her face as she does, hands on her hips — no, fists on her hips. Malcolm takes a deep breath and opens both his eyes before lifting his head, and doesn't that take a Herculean amount of effort. He’s about to say something when she walks off towards his bathroom, combat boots clomping on the wood floors and straight into the pounding in his head, adding to the symphony of beats he hears along with his heartbeat.
Today was a long day. Malcolm lets his head thunk back against the wall, hitting a tender spot from — ah, yes, falling onto Gil’s beloved car.
And he pointedly doesn’t want to think about that. Even if Malcolm took it on as a side project, paid someone to restore it at a shop, Gil would never accept the exorbitant amount of money spent to repair the vehicle despite the spirit of the gift. He’d tried, many, many times before, with various things he’d broken in the Arroyo home over the years.
It wasn’t that the gestures weren’t appreciated; Gil always thanked Malcolm for thinking of him. But that wasn’t why they were friends. Gil never asked for money or treated Malcolm like he had any to spare. Sure, he teased Malcolm for his upper-class oddities, but more because it amused him than anything else.
Leaning against the wall, Malcolm squirms, his back growing more sore the longer he sits still. The constant movement of the day, of running down the case and occupying his mind had kept him from feeling the effects of his dive through a window earlier in the day.
“Gotta love that impulsivity,” he mutters to himself. One of the least favorite attributes of his mental illness. At least one of them, e thinks. Everything’s muddled, sliding away from the front of his consciousness like oily eggs. Not that he isn’t used to that. He either can’t focus or hyper-focuses, which is very annoying —
“Bright? Hey, Bright, you in there?”
Dani’s voice breaks through his rambling thoughts, a slightly unwelcome interruption, and Malcolm opens his eyes to glare at her. When did he close his eyes, anyway?
“Okay, tough guy,” she smirks, shaking her head. “Let’s get you back to the couch.”
“But it took so much to get here,” he counters, motioning vaguely to the entryway. His arm flops back to his lap; she grabs it and yanks, shifting his whole upper body with some serious strength. It causes his back to flare up, aching, burning pain shooting up his spine, his eyes squeezing shut as he bites back a groan.
Malcolm’s riding the waves of pain rolling up and down his back when he feels a hand softly land on his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Dani’s voice whispers next to his ear, “I forgot about your heroic leap from a third story window.”
He huffs out a laugh that ends with a groan. She must take that as some kind of approval, because she slips her arm under his and around his shoulders. “I’m thinking bed would be better at this point.”
“Looking forward to strapping me in so I can’t do more damage?”
She tilts her head. “Sure.” The mirth in her eyes causes them to dance, the light hitting them just right, turning them amber.
He’s fascinated, leaning forward and up to get a closer look — Dani, the traitor she is, uses this as leverage and pulls him up in one swift movement, the sudden return to standing a surprise to both Malcolm and Sunshine, who had been perched on the coatrack nearby and decided, right then, to return to his shoulder.
Dani shakes her head. “I didn’t even know the bird came out.”
They walk, somewhat clumsily, towards the raised portion of the loft. Malcolm puts as little weight on his left leg as possible, leaning heavily on Dani, so focused on not throwing up he doesn’t have time to feel guilty or embarrassed about the situation he finds himself in. The pain in his leg flares up, bright red and explosive, sharp enough to drown out everything else, even his thoughts. It sweeps over him, narrowing his senses to what he must focus on — one foot in front of the other, don’t trip, watch where you’re going, listen if Dani says anything. It’s in this tunnel vision that Malcolm’s hearing centers on his own breathing, the inhales and exhales loud enough to distort anything outside of himself. Dani’s voice morphs as he stumbles over the single step, and he’s falling —
— doesn’t feel Dani catch him, just falls on the bed and sees the restraint and —
— blinks awake to the ceiling of his living room, utterly confused.
Sunshine’s tweets come from her cage, now, no longer flying free. Malcolm frowns, groggy and exhausted despite just waking up, limbs heavy in a familiar way. It’s painting a picture he’d been trying to avoid, and it was stupid to think he could avoid it by having someone come over. No, he just added an audience. It was bad enough he didn’t have control over his own brain; revealing the depth of that lack of control to someone else wasn’t something he ever wanted to share.
Ever.
Malcolm rubs his eyes and moves to sit up when a hand gently pushes at his shoulder. “Maybe give that leg a break for the night, huh?”
Gil. Of course. Dani wouldn’t have been able to carry him to the couch on her own, and after his reaction to the bed, wouldn’t have left him there.
“If I’d wanted Gil to know, I would have called him,” he says out loud, knowing Dani’s around somewhere.
Her voice comes from the kitchen. “I made an executive decision as the only conscious party.” There’s a pause. “You have a lot of tea.”
“It’s one of his favorite food groups,” snarks Gil.
Malcolm groans and flops onto the pillow. Dani and Gil have teamed up on him. He pauses, taking a breath, the room quiet but for Sunshine’s occasional trilling and the sounds of Dani brewing tea. The silence between them stretches long as they wait for him, or is he waiting for them? Malcolm never had any intention of hiding anything, because he called Dani for help. And he knows, because he’s spent hours thinking about the passive traits of his new team, she’d have told Gil the moment he’d commented on his limping the next morning.
Whatever lecture Gil is crafting from the chair he’s sitting in, silently stewing, is inevitable.
“Before you start,” Malcolm says, deciding to voice what he feels are positives in this situation, “I do want to point out I called a friend for help.”
Gil’s sitting forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. His eyes are on the stain on the carpet from earlier in the evening, moving up to where Malcolm’s laying, putting the pieces together. “Yeah, you did. Which is why I’m not yelling right now.”
“I didn’t know until I got home,” he adds.
Gil nods. “I can believe that.”
Malcolm narrows his eyes. “But?”
He sighs. Almost says something, then shakes his head and looks away. “Nothing.”
Dani returns and sits near Malcolm’s feet, holding out a mug of tea. Malcolm scoots up, Gil reaching out to raise a few pillows up for him to lean against, and she hands it to him. The aroma is earthy and sweet, with a twist of citrus. Darjeeling with milk and sugar.
“Thanks,” he smiles at her, “For more than the tea.”
Dani gives him a smile in return and sips at her tea, cryptic as ever, in a way that intrigues and delights him. If he could figure her out completely, she wouldn’t be engaging as a friend. He takes another sip, tense as he looks over at his friends — and there’s a strange concept. Sure, Gil being there is a given, something he can relax into. But the plural, Dani, is what throws him. What did she see? How much of a liability does she believe him to be now? How weak? A graze and the sight of his bed was bad enough he blacked out and she had to call for reinforcements.
And Gil, who helped get them into the wedding in the first place.
While generally pleased at the outcome of Malcolm’s antics, the methods were…wearing on him. Malcolm could tell. In the tightness around Gil’s eyes, the lack of sleep meaning he strains more and is refusing to put on his readers. The way he’s coiled, shorter to temper.
How he’s become more family to his own in the last few months than he has been in the last decade.
Malcolm sits up straight and almost spills his tea down the front of his…t-shirt? Recovering the mug, he notes he’s been changed into a soft grey tee and some black joggers, his eyes going down his legs and up to Dani, frowning enough she can read his thoughts enough she chokes on her drink as she laughs and points to Gil.
“I saved you from that indecency, too,” Gil offers. “Figured you didn’t want to stay in ripped up dress pants after we patched you up.” He sits back in the chair, getting comfortable for the first time since Malcolm woke up. “You have some pretty impressive bruises on your back, too. From destroying my car.”
Malcolm winces. Straight up winces. “Gil, I am so sorry. That wasn’t the plan, I swear.”
“Oh, yeah? So what was the brilliant plan you had when you told me to leave you alone in the room with a live landmine?” He raises his eyebrows, daring Malcolm to give him an answer, which, of course, Malcolm doesn’t have. There was no plan; he just needed less distraction, less people he cared for out of the blast radius, to think of one.
But the whole reason he was there in the first place was because he convinced Gil to bring him for a quick drive by, Malcolm’s fear of being alone on vacation overridden by his obsession with solving crimes, with the puzzles that distracted him from a theater brought back to life by a 24 hour stay with one John Watkins. It was, to his mentor, Gil’s fault Malcolm was there in the first place, his fault there are some spectacular and painful bruises on Malcolm’s back, and he’s sure Gil has found a way to blame himself for whatever happened at the Taylor wedding, despite having little knowledge of the plan, though Malcolm’s are always evolving. Gil has been around Malcolm long enough to know how his mind worked, and probably had an inkling, an idea, that Malcolm might go and try to fix things himself.
He hangs his head, a few strands of hair escaping to hang down in front of his face. “You’re thinking I need to go on that vacation.”
“I wouldn’t have put you on leave if I didn’t,” answers Gil. “Kid, I know working cases helps. Why do you think I took you on stakeouts when you were younger?” He sighs and runs a hand over his face. “I don’t know what happened tonight, Bright. Whatever it was means you need more time before you start working cases again.”
Malcolm wants to tell them, but he doesn’t know how to vocalize it. There are so many emotions wrapped up in touch and smell and feel and taste and thought and memory, all swirling together, a tie dye shirt of brilliant colors, controlled chaos, beauty to those who don’t live in the whirlpool, aren’t sucked under into caverns filled with water and darkness. He can drown down there, and is afraid if he’s left alone, on vacation, he just might.
“I can still call you, if I need to,” he blurts out, “I mean, I may not, but if I do,” he continues, backpedaling. Gil smiles, the first one of the night, and Malcolm could almost sigh with relief at how the tension lines around his eyes and mouth seem to disappear, erasing years from his face.
Dani swats his uninjured leg. “Both of us.”
A new emotion is added to the mix, one he can’t name, not yet, but as he looks at Dani and Gil, both sitting in his living room like nothing is wrong and they’d love nothing more than to just be there, with him, he relaxes into it, lets it slow down the whirlpool.
Malcolm takes a sip of his tea, closes his eyes to appreciate the sweet blend of flavors, and thinks maybe this time, he may not be alone in all this.